Graham Burgess

Artscapes

Ninesprings Nursery
The Weir,
Whitchurch,
Hampshire,
RG287JA
Tel. 01256 892837
Email gyrdangardens@gmail.com
http://www.artscapesdesign.co.uk/

The RSA was set up hundreds of years ago and a key part of it was bringing together and sharing various ways of thinking.
So I am writing this as a link to now but also going way back in time.
The Primavera..look and see.
A well-established procedure in past times was to tune into Nature’s
basic forces and a key one was the rising of the sun in the east and its
passage through the day to set in the west. So many churches and
cathedrals positioned facing east-west.

Look at Sandro Boticelli’s painting of The Primavera.
To the east two hints at underlying natural forces namely the wind and
lust. So a gust and a lust. Both ok if they are carefully controlled.

Something else we all exist in is the Green of Nature’s trees, shrubs ,
smaller plants and even algae. Yes they produce food but they also
produce oxygen.

So look at the numbers I have attached to his painting. Some of his
work went on the Bonfire of the Vanities around 7 th February around
Shrove Tuesday 1497.If Girolomo Savanarola had known the hidden
meanings in the Primavera painting it would certainly have gone on the
bonfire.

So what can we see.
Artscapes A.G.Burgess. Vat number 537 7287 10
Number 1 is the enclosing context of the woodland and Mother Earth
below. Possibly orange trees. Same sort of place as shown in the
world’s oldest mosaic at Hisham.

Number 2 alludes to the fruitful potential.
3 is the beginning of the story in the east . A male agent of Aeolus,
wind-god, is dropping off a young female.
So a gust bringing lust ?

4 is her stomach ready to eventually give birth.
5 she holds a hand forward in trepidation.
6 she looks back with a questioning expression as if to say “what are
you letting me in for ?”

In her mouth a very small sprig of green, the creative love force. Look
again at The Hisham Mosaic and the links between deer and green life.
Two deer are happily feeding on green shoots. The deer that is about to
be killed by a lion is separated from the green

Then we have a second figure. Not a different person but the same
person moved on in life.

7 is what she is leaving behind.
The bottom of the dress is hymenal.

8 is here linking to the next stage in her life.
9 and 11.. She is covered in flowers and 11 shows her vagina ready for
de-flowering.

11 The bottom of the dress is still hymenal.
In the background someone who has seen it all happen before,
possibly a matriarch. The centre of her face is in a circle and over her
head an arch (matri arch ?).

She is revealing her vagina and the hymen has flopped. It is red due
to the result of earlier birthing.

She holds out her hand in care in respect of what is about to happen
next. Does her swollen belly hint at a future birthing ?

is not three people but one at various stages in the dance of life. So
she has tuned around at 16 and then moved back east 17 and then
tuning into the old Greek concept rematio which means to return and
you do not discover certain things until you return to the topic, she
faces again west.

As she looks she sees a guy reaching up 19. Directly above the
Matriarch is another individual and that is Cupid. Cupid was thought to
be anywhere and he did not know where he was.
He had a bow and arrow and whenever he fired the arrow it was likely to
strike someone and they would fall in love. See he is blind folded. He
did not know who he was targetting, his action was based on underlying
intuition.

In the painting he has not fired the arrow but if we look at the direction
the arrow is pointing number 21. it will soon strike the lady’s heart as
she is about to fall in love.

In the painting a clue concerning lines that underlie many things. The
Green Line I have applied starts in her mouth number 6 , then onwards
to her neck. (beginning of necking?) then onto the three symbolic
figures where it passes through mouth, eyes and nose, key senses and
it ends up in the head of the male.

Before he started doing the painting Botticelli may have applied some
basic geometry as a skeleton to his work. He may have said “I want a
Golden Rectangle”. In early stages any size. A basic design concept is
“Proportion is more important than scale”. So how big can it be ?
A distance is a measure multiplied by a number. So a number based on
numerology and a measure ? cubit, inch, foot, centimetre, metre.
Another option is creative in a different way. It was said that the most
difficult thing to do in the design of a Japanese Garden is to position a
rock. No refer3ence to numbers or measures but the application of
Fengshui. So far I cannot link a number but he may have done
something very special in terms of geometry. A historic application was
the triangles forming the pyramids in Egypt. If you accept the Golden
Rectangle and insert The Great Pyramid of Giza three points emerge.
Firstly the feet of the pyramid fit in the corners of the Golden
Rectangle.18.

The line 15. From the top of the spire in the pyramid (inspiration)
heading south west to the earth is the line that Cupid is aiming along.
Ends up bottom left of pyramid and painting.
So look at it through the middle of the pyramid. A mid pray.

Two other lines running east and west provide skeleton for overlying
painting.

16.One connects the senses in various figures. A senses line links
males and females.

17.Another below links to the female fertility zones.
There is a lot of discussion about Botticelli’s sex life but the Primavera
is very pure and basic and revealing the forces that still affect us. Later
Francois Boucher produced a work that more accurately tuned into the
sort of Florentine Location chosen for local human beings to indulge.

I have known of the hidden messages for a while but only recently I
applied the pyramid because a current project is The Decimus Burton
Museum and due to his father’s interest in Egyptology Egyptian design,
shape and numerology was a key part of his work.

So yes Decimus (tenth child) designed key parts of Tunbridge Wells
architecture. Living accommodation mainly but also The Trinity Church.
This led me to ask “what does trinity refer to ?“

Design is often based on geometries.
A starting point is the creation of lines. They can be straight or curved.
A straight line starts with a chosen point. The size is a measure
multiplied by a number. So Decimus would not have applied metric it
would have been imperial of even cubits. On its own the straight line
does not enclose or embrace. At the end it finishes at another point.
If you want to enclose the first thing you can do is to apply three lines
and by linking the end points for each one with the starting points for
another you are on the way to a triangle. So TRI is three and TRINITY is
a later applied meaning some of which is now Christian.
An earlier application of a straight line was to a tool used to strike the
net result of fishing. It was a small wooden rod with a knob on the end.
By striking the fish it was moved from this existence to another later
one. A larger one was used to kill rabbits and rats.

They were called priests. Fishermen still have them. The rats and
rabbits may have been those stealing the harvest from old haystacks.
The priests are still demonstrated by Morris Dancers.
A later religious application was by a group of priests called Flammens.
They had names associated with agricultural tasks and they carried an
enormous priest and it is a wand. Brandished symbolically to help you
into a new spiritual world. W means “whatever follows this we are not
quite sure of” so a W and then? AND. Another name for a rigid rod is a
staff. So appointed staff carry out the special work.
The Flammens wore a priest hood and this linked to the protective
sheepskin cover placed over the old 77 feet all haystacks.

On its own the simple line does not enclose.
By applying the three lines of the triangle the balanced structure alludes
to various forces that might help sustain our life in a balanced way. Firm
foundations with a spire at the top. We can aspire to many things but we
spend most of our time at the lower level. Capability Brown said “No-
one looks above 27 degrees unless there is a special reason”. Angle for
current shop shelf design ? 27 degrees.

A similar triangular shape can be seen if we hold our hands up in a
balanced way. It produces another pyramid and one uses it to pray by
looking from the middle. PRAY MID.
So having produced a basic shape numerology is applied and that is
another rich concept.15 is the number of the Green Man and the Magic
Square; 18 is number of ISIS; 22 pieces in skull; 33 pieces in
spine.Multiples of 11 allude to the period of sunspot activity.
Another way special places were enclosed was the application of
curved lines and a pure one is the circle. Botticelli has applied it in the
Primavera Painting .
Later complexity came with the application of the spiral and the most
unique one is the Type One Classic Maze. Fibonacci was applied and
many of the Roman Amphitheatres are based on Fibonnacci.
I mentioned the Flammens earlier. Near the end of Flammens Way and
one of the oldest and largest banks in the world there is a massive
bronze Pine Cone. The efficient reproductive fertility of pine cones
depends on how the Fibonacci shape is applied to the seeds.
All this structured geometry was applied in jewellery and landscapes
until along came Hogarth’s Line of Perfect Beauty.

It is a line that is not straight or governed by mathematical proportions
it is a line that does not enclose on any one side more than the other. It
is the shape of a healthy woman’s body or a mature river meandering
through a valley.
Graham Burgess
FELLOW ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS UK
August 2024